The Innocent (1993 film)
Encyclopedia
Cast
- Anthony HopkinsAnthony HopkinsSir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
... Glass - Isabella RosselliniIsabella RosselliniIsabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini is an Italian actress, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and model. Rossellini is noted for her 14-year tenure as a Lancôme model, and for her roles in films such as Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her.-Background and early life:Rossellini is a...
... Maria - Campbell ScottCampbell ScottCampbell Scott is an American actor, director, producer, and voice artist.-Life and career:Scott was born in New York City, the son of George C. Scott, an actor, director, and producer, and Colleen Dewhurst, a Canadian-born actress. He graduated from Lawrence University in 1983. His brother is...
... Leonard - Hart BochnerHart BochnerHart Matthew Bochner is a Canadian film actor, screenwriter, director, and producer.-Life and career:Bochner was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Ruth , a concert pianist, and actor Lloyd Bochner...
... Russell - Jeremy SindenJeremy SindenJeremy Sinden was an English actor who specialised in playing eccentric military men and overgrown schoolboys.-Early life:...
... Captain Lofting - Corey JohnsonCorey JohnsonCorey Johnson is an American actor largely active in the United Kingdom. Johnson was born John Johnson in New Orleans, Louisiana....
... Lou
Source material
The screenplay was written by Ian McEwanIan McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
and based on his novel
The Innocent (novel)
-Summary:The novel takes place in 1955-56 Berlin at the beginning of the Cold War and centres on the joint CIA/MI6 operation to build a tunnel from the American sector of Berlin into the Russian sector to tap the phone lines of the Soviet High Command. Leonard Marnham is a 25-year-old Englishman...
of the same name.
Summary
The film takes place in 1950s BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
at the height of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and centres around the joint CIA/MI6 real-life Operation Gold
Operation Gold
Operation Gold was a joint operation conducted by the American CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone...
: building a tunnel
Operation Gold
Operation Gold was a joint operation conducted by the American CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone...
under the Russian sector of Berlin.
Release and reception
The movie spent twelve months in studio quarantine, then was released—a poor Hollywood sign—without advance screenings for critics. In The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, film critic Caryn James wrote, "It's not a good omen for 'The Innocent' that the prototypical Yank turns out to be Anthony Hopkins, the shy Englishman Leonard is played by the American Campbell Scott and the German woman who intrigues them is Isabella Rossellini...But 'The Innocent,' which has been on the shelf for at least a year and was dumped in theaters yesterday without advance screenings, eventually overcomes its obstacles and almost lives up to its promising pedigree. You can trust Ian McEwan, who wrote the screenplay from his 1990 novel, to turn this fraught political situation into a dark, paranoid love story. And you can count on the director John Schlesinger (whose most famous film is 'Midnight Cowboy' and most recent is the efficient thriller 'Pacific Heights') to bring it to life with a commanding sense of its increasingly complex elements. What begins as a low-key tale of espionage, with allies spying on each other and everybody's motives in doubt, becomes a tense and suspenseful love story with Hitchcockian overtones." Rita Kempley in the Washington Post, on the other hand, called the movie "baffling." She continued, "The acting proves as inconsistent as Schlesinger's ability to build and release suspense. In full swagger, Hopkins seems to be doing Teddy Roosevelt in preparation for the title role in 'Nixon.' Rossellini recalls her mother, Ingrid Bergman, in an airport farewell scene that echoes 'Casablanca.' It doesn't detract from the actress's work, but it does invite negative comparisons. Talk about amounting to a hill of beans."